For agents, Hannah shared some unique selling points of Hebridean Island Cruises.
Firstly, Hebridean Island Cruises offer a ‘truly all-inclusive experience’ including all ‘excursions, fine dining, drinks, gratuities, port taxes.’ Uniquely, they also cover anything that passengers spend whilst ashore, for example if they choose to visit a local cafe, Hebridean Island Cruises will cover the cost. This gives their guests extraordinary value for money and allows them to enjoy a ‘worry-free journey’.
Hannah believes that it is also important for agents to emphasise the ‘higher level of attentive personalised service’, with a high crew to guest ratio. As a result, Hebridean Island Cruises welcome a significant number of repeat guests who value slow-travel, connection, genuine hospitality and the ability to travel with ‘like-minded people’.
Travel packages which include travel to and from the ship, and any additional accommodation that is needed are also offered. This includes flights, train journeys, and a private charter coach which brings guests from Glasgow or Inverness Railway Station or Airport to the ship so guests don’t have to worry.
Hebridean Island Cruises also partner with the Belmond Royal Scotsman, a luxury sleeper train offering indulgent journeys through the Scottish Highlands, to offer a ‘two-centre approach which is quite attractive to overseas clients’.
The Widgety team were keen to learn more about the single cabins aboard Hebridean Island Cruises’ ships. Hannah explained that single cabins were ‘really important’, aligning with the ‘brand’s guest profile, values and style of cruising’, attracting a ‘high proportion of independent, confident travellers who are often well travelled, mature guests who prefer to explore alone without paying large single supplements.’
On Hebridean Princess, a third of the cabins are single cabins, with no single supplement. And with the small number of guests aboard each ship, Hannah emphasised that single guests feel looked after and cared for, being seated on ‘large hosted tables with one of the ship’s officers’. Single travellers can ‘make friends and socialise easily, and don’t get lost in a big crowd’ like they may do on larger ships.
Many regular guests are single travellers, who become part of a larger community and often ‘meet the same people time and time again’.
In exciting news, Hebridean Island Cruises have recently chosen to use Widgety’s new API to power their website – we were eager to learn more about this decision.
Hannah shared that the company have used Widgety for several years and have found it ‘great to have our cruises, prices, ship information and brochures all in one place’. The team have also found Widgety to be ‘really helpful and efficient in helping us get our cruises to market’.
When creating their new website, the aim was to streamline their processes, and as a result using Widgety’s API was the ‘obvious thing to do’ to avoid inconsistencies and ensure that the latest cruises and prices were consistent across the trade and their own website, ensuring they were providing accurate and up-to-date information across all their online platforms. So far, this has been a great success giving Hebridean Island Cruises consistency with no room for error.
